Mac OS X 10.7 Lion to add Office file viewing, new text and signature annotation

In Mac OS X Lion, Preview 5.5 gains the ability to view Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents and expands its PDF annotation features.

Mac OS X's Preview app originated as a way to view graphics and PDF documents without needing to install third party Reader software from Adobe. Apple has continuously made minor improvements to the app, and Lion's updates reflects the overall goals of the new operating system.

For example, Preview is now a Full Screen app, and it also drops its nonstandard "bubble" toolbar icons reminiscent of Mail.app to adopt the new squared-off, monochromatic iPad-like buttons of other Lion apps (including the new Mail).

Expanded Previews

A key new feature of Preview is the ability to open and preview Microsoft Office documents, sparing users from having to obtain and install Office or iWork just to play a slideshow or work with spreadsheet. In Lion, Preview is now the default app for presentation and spreadsheet documents until you install something else. Word documents continue to default to open in TextEdit.

The new support for Office documents appears to connected to Quick Look, which already previews Office documents from the Finder. In Preview, documents that can be viewed in Quick Look can be opened in a fixed window, or even Full Screen for quick reference via Mission Control, something the temporary Quick Look window can't do.

Documents opened in Quick Look now sport a button that launches Preview and opens the document for more permanent perusal, changing the app from being just an Adobe Reader substitute into a full fledged, general purpose document viewer.

A new Magnifier tool in Preview works similar the loupe in Aperture, blowing up an area of graphic files for closer examination.

Enhanced PDF annotations

Creating annotations on PDF documents is also significantly expanded in Lion's Preview, with annotation tools now presented in a more sensible (and iPad-like) location below the toolbar, rather than at the bottom of the window. In addition to simple text, colored lines, arrows and rectangles or circle outlines, Preview now supports filled shapes, outlined text, and cartoon-like speech or thought bubbles.

Another new annotation feature is the ability to capture and add a handwritten signature. From preferences, Preview allows users to hold up a handwritten signature that is captured by the system's camera to yield a line art signature that can be digitally added to PDF documents.

61 Comments

dualie

said about 12 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Technically, a picture is not line art. It is a bitmap image. Line art is vector art using paths with strokes and fills. This is not a trivial distinction in the world of high quality print, though it's probably irrelevant when talking about something that is only viewed on-screen.

rot'napple

said about 12 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Preview allows users to hold up a handwritten signature that is captured by the system's camera to yield a line art signature that can be digitally added to PDF documents.

All cool stuff, but for seven bucks, doesn't this signature do the same, but with more features and options?
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myapplelove

said about 12 years ago

Quote:

adopt the new squared-off, monochromatic iPad-like buttons

sorry guys at apple but this monochromatic hell a la the new itunes you are forcing upon us is SHIT, and it goes against any interface guidelines, including apple's own. Can we please drop this?

Steve, what the hell is going on with interface design these days? Itunes has become a grey atrocity, including (shoot the guy in the foot who thought of that) itunes preferences for some reason. On the dock the app store is blue, itunes is a similar shade of blue, quicktime is pretty much the same shade of blue, and mail, safari, and finder are essentially blue. Some of the most commonly used apps of the os, are virtually indiscernible, you can only quickly tell settings, ical and address book... and now you guys are making buttons, side bars etc. monochromatic too? Wtf is going on? Is this progress? Greying out, embossing, making monochromatic... what' the upside to this? That they are not distracting? I haven't seen anyone getting distracted by the os's buttons. So what's it for? Change for changes sake? Oh look great now we have these amazing colour accurate displays and we are going to turn everything monochromatic.

Just because windoze looks like some fisher price shit, doesn't mean you guys have to go the other way, and iron out and obliterate colour coding from the os buttons. Every neuropsychological paper on this is clear that we (and I can quote many) as humans are much faster in telling colours apart than either monochromatic drawings or words. So what exact purpose are you serving here? Making it harder to tell each button apart? Slowing down os usage?

Good job in making opticians rich... put the horrid glass as standard on the macbooks too so they can become billionaires. Boy would it be great to look on glare-filled screens at embossed monochromatic buttons....

EPIC fail.

edit: Dan what's your take on this btw? Do you like this? Do you find it conducive to a better interface?

solipsism

said about 12 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by dualie

The system can?t convert a bitmap image to a vector image so it can scaled more effectively when used? That?s what I thought they were getting it, but I know almost nothing about image tech.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rot'nApple

All cool stuff, but for seven bucks, doesn't this signature do the same, but with more features and options?

I?ve used that with and without a stylus. The results weren?t much better than using a paint app to do the same thing. This inclusion into Preview lets me use a nicely written signature from a proper writing instrument.

cy_starkman

said about 12 years ago

Not sure if MS Office file conversion/rendering is improved but I just hope some of that love comes over to pages/numbers for iOS and OSX cause currently it is quite bad.

The only hope outside MS Office itself on OSX is OpenOffice. Perhaps Apple could throw in behind that lot and give it a slick interface... not much chance there I suppose.

On iOS pickings are even slimmer if you want to make an edit

(to word/excel files)